


Woman's Work

by anniesburg



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, Pity your former significant other basically, Revisiting an old flame, Somewhat romantic reminiscing, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniesburg/pseuds/anniesburg
Summary: Whatever this relationship is, it could greatly benefit from a lack of ardent persistence. Blackwood, however, considers ceaseless stubbornness a positive trait.





	Woman's Work

**Author's Note:**

> oof blackwood's a bad dude but i have a crush so ofc i wrote this. enjoy!! maybe i'll write a prologue, maybe not.

You dig your hands into soft, dark earth and plant tulips, of all things. The first hard frost is on the move, December will come, chasing off Autumn. It runs like an animal, paws at the ground and disrupts. It only disrupts and it happens so frequently that it’s now part of a cycle. 

A cold wind blows on your face as you place bulbs in a row in the little patch of garden you’ve been given. It’s formulaic but it’s good work, you turn your head towards the brick wall interrupted by a large window. The nursing home will be a beautiful sight in spring, very inviting. 

You’re used to people coming and going, other volunteers or residents joining you on their knees in the dirt. It’s hard to feel alone here, your eyes lift after a few minutes pass and Mrs Runner’s taken up the helm of starting another row. 

She’s quite young in comparison to everyone else here, barely seventy. She smiles at you and you return it, making conversation has never been a priority, but you doubt she would be able to hear you if you tried. 

You seen her come and you see her go, she stands up after half an hour. One less row to be done, you wave at her as she leaves. You’re grateful, you hope she knows that. 

So when your eyes fall back on your work, you’re startled by the pair of wingtip shoes in your peripheral vision. You tilt your head up, up, up and resist the urge to grimace in disfavour. 

Everyone’s gone, all of a sudden. Even the late-fall birds have packed up their songs and flown to fairer roosts. It’s as if they, and anyone else in the vicinity, knew to head indoors for the foreseeable future. You face him alone. 

“Good afternoon, sister,” he says, you don’t like that he’s the one to speak first.. 

“Yes, good afternoon. Father Blackwood, I---” he waits for you to finish speaking, you don’t like that any more than his greeting. “I’m almost finished here,” 

“Finished with what?” he asks, he looks at the ground with thinly-veiled disgust. He pushes dirt with the toe of his expensive shoe. “Scarring the earth with useless baubles?” he stands tall above you, you’re genuinely afraid he’ll pierce the back of your hand with the end of his cane. 

“Tulips aren’t useless,” you correct him. “they have some healing properties,” Blackwood scoffs.

“Flights of fancy with petals,” he states and you resist the urge to roll your eyes. 

“I was going to say that a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” you’re more than insistent, you’re certain of this. He doesn’t look impressed.

“If the frost doesn’t kill them,” he loves correcting you so much. It’s at odds with the rest of his indifference. 

You’re not stupid, you know why his voice carries that serrated edge. Blackwood is upset with you, annoyed and unable to understand why you’re still here. You don’t bother to stand yet, that would be like snipping the stitches sealing a fresh wound. 

He hides it well but the unmissable lines of hurt are carved in his face, stoic and simple. The wind moves around your head, catching your hair and tossing it in your eyes. 

“Everything’s killed by the cold and the ice. Except out Dark Lord.” Blackwood grits his teeth.

“The pits of Hell contain the hottest fire,” he hisses. “Dante lied.” Now, you stand. 

“Yes, but it was charming. You could learn a thing or two from that.” the reality of your situation is extended limbo without the immediate pain of the flames. It’s almost crueler this way. 

Surely he says something else, but you’re not looking at him any more. Your eyes are drawn over his shoulder, peering past him. The spell of Blackwood’s presence appears to be broken, one of the side doors opens. 

You stare at another man with shaking hands and a shock of white hair. He doesn’t look as if he sees the things he looks at. He, too stays upright. Not because of put-on airs, but you can see from your distance the way his legs falter. 

He isn’t here to help with the garden, you watch a girl about your age dart out of the home and rush beside him. She picks up his hand. 

“I know why you’re here,” when did Blackwood’s face come as close to yours as it is, you turn your head. He’s whispering at least. 

“Then cast me out, Father,” you say without really thinking. You don’t look at him. “excommunication should suffice, you must be chomping at the bit to make an example out of someone like me.” You’re not exactly making this easy on yourself. He looks appalled that you’ve chosen to attract his ire. 

“You know perfectly well---” he begins and you cut him off with a glare that punctures his skin like it’s soft and pink, not the sheet metal that it is. 

“I’m here to plant flowers,” you insist, there is no missing the desperation in your voice. If he’s too coward to push you, you can’t do him harm by falling anyway. 

“You’re self-flagellating with a spade, you stupid---” you wait, wait for him to aim some barb at your person and strike. He’s snakelike in that way, flashing cruelty in his eyes. You elect not to look at them out of fear of being burned.

Once you might’ve been silly enough to believe that seeing you punishing yourself in this way does him a similar harm. Now you know what’s true. Every second you look at the man you knew and still love is a second you could spend looking at Blackwood. And you choose not to. 

You know what you’ve chosen, you’ve spent sixty years with it already. Until he withers and dies, you will live with it. 

“Why are you still so jealous, Faustus?” your voice sounds disembodied, like it’s not of your throat. He can test and prick but he won’t make you cry, not again. Your eyes turn away from the mortal to his, all water and no colour. “He doesn’t even know who I am any more.” 

“Then why persist?” he’s a master at answering questions with other questions. So free to accept honesty and yet refusing to give it. You shake your head. 

“Oh, the things we do for love,” you tell him. It’s unspoken yet palpable that the ‘we’ you speak of excludes him. “you’re in my light, Father. I still have a few rows left.” 

Rather unceremoniously, you drop to your knees and resume your gardening. The shoes carry themselves away and when you look to see where they’ve gone, them and their wearer have vanished.  


\---  


He still knows the way to your home, he carves through the dim-lit streets like a bloodstream navigating veins. He could open one, yours if he’s keeping with the metaphor. If you love mortals so much, he could make you live like one. Die like one.

It’s a lie that witches are without love, most of the time. He could never say for certain if such a fault is to be blamed on what he is or who he is. Blackwood does not know which is worse. 

But the way you look at that shrivelled, shambling body like it’s your dearest love--- that truly is the worst thing. It’s a sickening sight and one he’s bound to purge of his memory. 

Seeing you in the warm glow of your house with no unsightly dirt or useless frivolity is good for his soul. Or what’s left of it that’s his, anyway. The Dark Lord is not merciful by any stretch of the imagination, but surely there is a silver left of the intangible substance that is still in his name. It isn’t his heart that’s rocked by you, you pierce somewhere deeper and he despises the hollow sound that results. 

Love, that is not love as he’s quick to correct himself, is a reminder of the emptiness of his being. So Blackwood enjoys the little things, the way you shrink away in fear and cling to the door. It’s nice to know when one still has dominion. 

“Why are you doing this?” you ask him, but it sounds more like a hiss. He’s nearly offended that you’re trying to offend him. You’re so lost, detached from your community and driving yourself to distraction over a mortal corpse. 

“Earlier, in the garden. I said things that were not---” you cut him off, he doesn’t know if he enjoys it. 

“True?” you ask him. He intended to say helpful, but he doesn’t correct you. “Fine, now you’ve corrected yourself. I am very sorry, Father but you’ll have to excuse me,” the door moves to close and he does not allow it. 

His fingers are barb-tipped with dangerously sharp nails, you recoil further and slink backward into your foyer. 

“I recall a time when I was welcome in this house,” he’s doesn’t mean to relive it when he says this, but he does. He remembers the warmth of your skin and the fire both against his body. He remembers magic and static, despite himself.

“And now you’re encroaching,” you say, he hates your desperation. He opens the door, Blackwood steps inside and the terror in your eyes bubbles. 

“You fear me?” Blackwood asks as if that isn’t his greatest wish. Fear is better, it’s always better. You step back, he’ll make you stay put if you do it again. 

“I fear what you’ll do,” you say. “I knew you so well, once. Now, I---” he’d never considered himself predictable, perhaps straightforward and he senses it’s what you mean. Something has changed since he began to pursue you afresh, there is an unwillingness to ignore his mortal rival.  


\---  


That same expression returns from the garden, the hurt burned into his face like acid in an etching plate. He becomes something else in front of you, closing the door. He becomes something approaching your memory, still a witch but one that wants to try to love you. You distrust this.

“Now I don’t know what you are,” you begin with more confidence in your voice. He never did like it when you didn’t care. “I fear I’ll never be rid of you.” 

The way his face changes is uncomfortable to behold. You can handle rage, hot and brimming. You can look at his pain and his cold and his affectionate gazes. But the pitiable, broken turn that overcomes him is strange and unnatural. You find yourself acting opposite to your senses, stepping forward instead of away. 

“Faustus---” it’s as if he’s finally heard you. It took him so long, but finally. 

He doesn’t say it, but he looks it. Blackwood wants to know why he can’t have you, why he can’t keep a small piece of you in a drawer at the back of his head. He’d like that, something to take out and admire on the coal-black nights. 

You can’t give him that, not when he once had it. He’s owned a small part of your bargained soul as readily as the Dark Lord. Blackwood treated it cheaply, he lost it. He can’t have it back, but he can see it again. You decide to let him see it again. 

Stumbling forward as his face betrays the way you’ve wounded him, he doesn’t shrink away as you reach for his hand. Blackwood is unsteady, so cold against your warm fingers. He turns his hand towards yours almost greedily, drinking in what you can spare for him. 

He’ll hate this tomorrow, this is not the first time he’s accepted cast-offs of your kindness. But you miss arms around you, and his fold around your waist the way you once liked it. 

This is a state of giving in, it’s just as hard for him to enjoy it but somehow--- somehow he always does. His cane falls with a thud, a shattered status symbol on your foyer floor. 

“Winter's here already,” you tell him, his face is near yours but not like how it was in the garden. He no longer desires to intimidate, instead he yearns for the closeness that will confirm he can feel the breaking spring before the real cold’s come. 

He’s a filthy cheat, as you are. Even if you have no soon-to-be-fiancé, this act will weigh heavy as a chain around your neck when it’s done. But you missed this, and the knowledge that this is is a terrible mistake feels distant as you touch your lips to his. 

Blackwood is very fond of involving teeth, you brace your hands on his shoulders and restraint yourself from biting first. You force him to behave with slow motions, careful kisses as you press your warm front to his. 

He does know how to embrace, at least. There are hands on your upper back, sharp fingernails against the fabric of your robe. You hold him against you, giving as good as he does. Blackwood informs you recklessly and without saying a word that you have been terribly missed, the least you can do is be truthful with him. 

Reaching behind you, you take his hand. He feels more alive now, not as if all his blood’s been replaced with steel. Carefully, you move across the carpet, you pull him further into your home. The sofa looks as inviting as it is acceptable. He hasn’t earned your bed, perhaps he never will again. 

Gentleness is key, he’s always delighted in being too rough. But with the right pressures, Faustus follows direction well enough to get him seated. His body covers yours out of instinct, he tears at his clothes and your own. 

“Enough,” you begin, “enough!” he’s not starving, he’s not owed this. But you don’t say it, your glare is a metallic reminder of this and his hands still.

“I wanted to---” the power’s in the air between you, hung up like an inverse chandelier. It can stay there with the frustration and the shared entitlement. You hold up a hand.

“Faustus, spare me,” there’s a lightness to your voice that you don’t expect, that he certainly doesn’t. “close your eyes.” it’s a soft command, he doesn’t do as beautifully with direct orders. But he does, perhaps if he had not he might’ve found that smile on your mouth that he sought after. It doesn’t matter. 

You trace the curve of his lower lip, placing a kiss there that only lasts a fraction of the time. Your passion is instead realized with steady hands undoing his cravat, pulling and pushing expensive fabrics. He won’t bend, but his wardrobe will. 

“Do you know what year it is?” you watch his face, expression shifting just slightly without him opening his eyes. He wonders if it’s a trick, it is. You press your lips against his ear and sigh, “it’s 1848.” 

“I remember,” he tells you. It wasn’t near-winter, then. It wasn’t even in this house, but a hundred-and-seventy years crumbles away like the castle he built himself. You kiss his jaw, pulling him closer by the loose ends of his cravat. He sighs when you kiss his neck, a perfect mirror held up to the past. 

“Do you know where we are?” you ask. He doesn’t shiver as he once did, but he was younger. Age puts a different kind of shiver in one’s soul. 

“A field,” he says. His voice is changed, halting. You check and his eyes are still closed, very good. “with the light of Saturn burning a hole in the sky.” 

Blackwood hisses when you sink your teeth into his neck. It’s not a very hard bite, but it makes him rigid under your hands. You squeeze his shoulders, kissing where was bitten a touch more languidly than you’ve afforded earlier. 

“It was beautiful,” and he makes a sound of agreement. “stay there, you can open your eyes.” he looks like he doesn’t need you to tell him to do so, but his priority instead is returning your affections. 

His eyes do not stay open for very long, only enough to see you, to find your throat and to pin you back against the sofa. You fall back with him atop you, no smile but there is a noise of surprise. 

Your arms wrap around Blackwood, keeping him near as he performs the once-familiar ritual of turning the right side of your neck red and purple. 

Almost two-hundred years ago, you turned your face to the stars and watched them glitter. Now, you face the wooden beams above your head, licked by firelight. There is less of a sense, you realize as you hiss his name, of new beginnings here. 

His knee is between your thighs, an old trick that produces good results. You break the mirror, turning your head towards his and kissing what you can reach.


End file.
